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Story:Delta V
Delta V is the first story set in the Republic of Xelass. It details the beginnings of renewed hostilities between the Republic and the Coalition of People's Republics. Prologue Supporting his head with one hand, Irnos read through the latest paperwork with a growing sense of depression. He took the bottle of Kaevel cider that sat on the end of his desk and took a swig, savouring the warm rush down his throat. He didn't have much left in the mini-fridge at the end of his bed, but he had enough. He stopped to look around the room, taking a break from the words to allow his acheing eyes to refocus. The room was quite dark- that was why his table lamp was on, after all- and far too crowded. The supply officer would have said 'cosy', but this wasn't cosy. Cosy wasn't metal and concrete. His desk sat next to his bed- a simple bed, just a sheet over a matress over a steel frame. It creaked whenever you moved on it, just like all the others. A skworbug scurried around the legs, searching for crumbs or spills. It found none- when they had to spend two hours a day cleaning, scraps didn't commonly survive. He considered just how different military life was to that he believed it would be- cleaning. Drills. Inspections. More cleaning. Sure, he knew why it was done, but that didn't mean he had to like it. The stereotype had been wrong in other ways too. The drill sergeants weren't bad people. They were just performing the same psychological tricks that had been done for decades in order to break down a soft city boy and rebuild him harder, stronger, a soldier. And sometimes it worked. But outside of inspections and exams, he'd sat down with them once and learned a lot. He once saw them like unstoppable, sadistic, uncompromising machines- but now he could see them as Zeth. People. Apparently the army and marines had it harder, but Irnos was a spacer. He had wanted to be an astronaut, but he hadn't got anywhere near the grades or the scientific curiosity, so that dream had been quashed. Until the space fleet was established. It was like a dream come true to the young Irnos Vess. Go to space. Live on board a nuclear rocket, fight, and give those commies what they deserved- a good thrashing. A nuclear rocket. His lip curled into a grin. He sighed once more and looked back at the paperwork. Tomorrow he would graduate from the XSF cadet training course, and be a proper spacer, plying the stars and what have you, sent up on the next frigate. It still hadn't hit him yet- all those years of work, over? That couldn't be right. Without the routine of training life... how could things stay together? He heard footsteps as someone walked in, and turned his head to look. It was Terrim- tall, handsome, always smiling, and always glad to talk. "Hi, Terrim." "Hey, Irnos! Still reading?" "Yeah." "What exactly?" He came over, looking far too interested than he should have been, and leaned over Irnos' shoulder. His eyes scanned the page, and then he drew back. "Nope, no idea." "You know what I'm going to be doing, right?" "Er... spacing. Of some kind." "Assistant engineer." Irnos growled. "These are risk assessments. Forty pages of fucking risk assessments." "Oh." Terrim's smile returned. "Heh." "You've never seen a risk assessment before." It was a statement, not a question. "Never. Looks boring." "You've no idea." "But graduation tomorrow! Proper spacers! Flying up into space and shooting commies!" "I've heard it's more along the lines of getting shouted at for wasting propellant." "For you, maybe." "Yeah. For me. I have to stare at dials all day and get told how to work a nuclear reactor by some old guy with a control rod up his-" "No fighting?" "No fighting. Maths, maths, and maths. Delta vees, propellant masses, and orbit changes." "Well, good luck with that." Terrim gave him one last- infuriating- smile, and wandered back out. Irnos admired the man's innocence, his mind uncorrupted by all those bloody numbers. At least he'd have a computer to do the calculations for him. He looked back at the risk assessments, and allowed his head to fall down onto the desk. Chapter One The scaffolding itself was more than impressive enough. A 170m-tall mass of steel and plastic, it supported the frigate and its takeoff rockets, as well as allowing the internal lift to reach the entrance hatch. It glinted in the dawn light, the first beams of the rise of Aiston's sun making it shimmer like distant water. Attached to it was the vessel itself- the XSS Unity, a Hanutun-class frigate. Like the rest of its class, it would be 50m long when it reached orbit, but with its blast-off stages it was four times that height. Solid-fuel rockets surrounded the cylinder of liquid fuel, white and blue, upon the launch pad. The vessel itself was a dull silver, not very reflective, and shaped like a rocket should be- an upright, tapering structure, with landing fins and attitude jets and a nosecone and retracted radiators and external fuel sacs and- Irnos released the breath and readjusted his backpack to get it to stay on. The group of them were heading over for their first flight- six recruits to join the eight veterans already in there. The proportion seemed too high to Irnos, but it was a young fleet. There weren't enough veterans. Terrim was smiling away at the back of the group, with his girlfriend, Rena. There was around a four-to-two gender split in the recruits, but apparently this would even out the proportions on the craft itself. Irnos caught himself wondering what the point of that was when, after all, the women on board would be too old for them. They reached the lift entrance, and were ushered in by annoyed-looking takeoff attendants. The lift was damp despite being steel, and very cramped. Pressed against the wall, Irnos watched the number on the screen above the doorframe increase- distance from the ground. About 190m up, the door opened, and they were in the access tube. This was a steel bridge spanning the gap, surrounded by a cylinder of flexible plastic even though it wasn't raining. They went in and closed the hatch, to be greeted by the captain. The captain was a tall Zeth, wearing a comms helmet and a tight flight suit. He looked the six of them up and down, and then began to speak. "Welcome to the Unity. We're taking off in six minutes- go to your stations. If you have any questions, ask someone else. Put your flight suits on and remember to strap yourselves in properly before stage one begins to fire. Got it?" They nodded together. "Good. And when I say properly, I mean properly. Better too tight than slightly loose." He turned and walked off. They headed off to where they had to go, taking a flightsuit from the pile as they passed, and putting it on as they walked. Irnos knew that the engine control room was the bottom deck, but his sense of direction had been more than a little confused by the fact that there were chairs on the ceiling. Still, it made sense; when the burn ended, there would be no gravity, and the ceiling was preferred at those times as it was further from the reactor. There would be beds, sinks, and other such things on the ceiling too. There was a hatch in the floor, and once Irnos had his suit on, he made his way downwards along a runged ladder. He found himself in the engine room, and as predicted there were consoles on the ceiling. An old Zeth turned to look at him. "You Irnos?" "Aye, sir." "Good. I'm Engineer Vake." Irnos took a moment to study the man. He wasn't old, but he wasn't young either, and he had a back slightly too hunched to be normal. A pair of fragile-looking, round-rimmed glasses dangled on his snout. He seemed to be attempting to look as ancient as possible, even if it was just a facade. The Engineer spoke again. "You know the routine? We take seats on opposite sides of the room. It's best for the mass to be balanced, even though the ship's dealing with far worse in terms of aerodynamics- what's yours?" "79 kilograms." "Alright. Move your chair three notches towards the wall when you get to it." "Does anything need to be done first, sir?" "Final checks. Don't worry about it- I'll just narrate each as I do it." Vake moved from instrument to instrument, looking down his glasses at them. "Reactor temperature is in the safe range. No fractures detected. The reaction chamber wall is reflecting correctly, so it's not fractured and won't break down during burn. Position is right. Attitude thrusters are fine- we're good to go." He tapped the comm switch. "Yes, Vake?" "All ready, sir." "Good. Take-off in two." The comm bleeped as the conversation was ended. Irnos sat down, moving the chair forward three notches, and then strapped himself in tight. Vake was doing the same on the far side of the room, which admittedly wasn't very far away. Their flight suits were grey, with only the XSF logo on the chest and no other markings. "We need all these rockets to lift us up because of our mass. We haven't fuelled, but we're still around 1400 tonnes. The thrust of the whole assembly is about three hundred and fifty million newtons, which is counting both the liquid and solid fuel rockets. Slightly more than enough to take us into orbit, where we can fuel ourselves up with ammonia and then set off to Kranas. On Kranas, escape velocity is about 2.2km/s, so we don't need anywhere near so much boosting." Irnos remembered that Aiston's escape velocity was about 7.8km/s. The moon, which had about a hundredth of the planet's mass, would naturally have far less. The other moon was even smaller, so the CPR did have a little advantage when it came to Aiston-moon-system hops. They lost out in terms of fuel recovery, though. Lots of people thought that escape velocity was the velocity that had to be reached to escape the planet's gravity. Not so- the Republic couldn't design anything that could even approach such a speed in the time taken to get from surface to exosphere. Any object capable of powered flight could get up there- it was just a matter of how long it could burn for. And it decreased with distance from the surface, too, so it wasn't as big of a challenge as subscribers to that misconception might have believed, though it was rocket science and Irnos wouldn't have been able to get a ship into orbit if he'd designed the system. Getting to orbit was to get halfway to anywhere. It was the single most difficult part of spaceflight. Due to environmental concerns, and the relatively primitive designs they had, nuclear rockets weren't allowed to be used on the ground. It was a pity, when they could achieve far higher thrust for far less mass. Everything would be made so much more efficient. He'd heard the terms 'closed-cycle gas core' and 'liquid-core nuclear rocket' tossed around in these regards, but no prototypes had been constructed. "T-minus ten seconds." Ah. Irnos braced himself for take-off. Vake grinned from across the room. "It feels like a boulder on your chest, even with the suit." "T-minus nine seconds." Irnos remembered the centrifuge they had had to spin around in to simulate the acceleration. It had hurt, a lot. Several people had blacked out during the cycle. You got more used to it after a few cycles, but the attendants were only too happy to remind you that actual take-off would be even more powerful. "T-minus six seconds." He knew that his dad was watching the takeoff from a few miles away, and would be standing there now, ready to wave his son goodbye. Perhaps feeling as nervous as Irnos himself- no spacecraft had ever failed during launch in the Republic's space program, but they had in the CPR's. The Kassic Empire's first and only attempted launch had ended in a catastrophic explosion and the death of a prince- they hadn't tried that again. "T-minus three seconds." Crap. Crap crap crap crap. This would not be pleasant. "T-minus one second." There was a sudden push from underneath, as if something enormous had rammed the bottom of the rocket, powerful enough to lift all those thousands of tonnes into the air. "And we have lift off." The PAs cut out. The acceleration was not too strong at first- off the pad, it was barely noticeable. Irnos knew that this wouldn't last, however, and that as the launch rockets depleted their fuel, it could reach 6Gs or more. Blackouts occurred. Far more obvious was the vibration and the sheer noise- his teeth chattered and his brain was thrown around inside his skull, the roar of the engines was deafening and filled the room... Vake was shouting something, and grinning, but Irnos couldn't hear it over the noise. Irnos grimaced as the pressure built on his chest and his skull. The acceleration reached its maximum after a few hellish minutes, and was forcing him downwards ever more strongly... Finally giving in to the force of acceleration, he blacked out. Chapter Two He awoke to Vake grinning down at him. His head still hurt, and he was lying on an emergency blanket. He groaned and tried to get up, but slipped and fell back down, to the engineer's amusement. Crap, he'd forgotten about the acceleration gravity being a twentieth of that on the surface. "So we've fuelled already? Uh, I mean, have we fuelled, sir?" "Yeah. You were out for about an hour. And you don't need to do all that 'sir' crap. We're just Zeth in space now." "Alright." He lifted himself up, gently. "Was I the only one?" "Heh. No- five others. They're all fine. Apparently too much fuel got out in the first few seconds." "Ah." "It's not a major deal, so long as it doesn't happen again. Nasty shock." The hatch opened, and a female Zeth came down. One of the veterans. She'd taken her flight suit off and was wearing casuals, and now that Irnos looked, so was Vake. "Hey Vake, Vess." She nodded at them both. "How's Ulia?" Irnos gave her a confused look. "Ulia?" Vake laughed. "The reactor. I named her." "Oh." "Yeah. She's good. We're on a cruising burn, all's working and nothing's broken. She'll fly true." He smiled. "And how are the lasers, Sina?" "They're fine. We can't test properly because the chamber's full of propellant so the reactor's not making our electricity, but the battery-powered beams are going on target." Sina looked around a little whistfully. "And I forget- how long's the journey?" "Our average speed will be 8km/s or so. About twenty hours." "Quite fast?" "Nah. A battleship could do it in a twentieth of that." "Hm." "Vess?" "Yeah?" Irnos turned to face him, still trying to adjust to the new gravity. "What's the reactor temperature?" Irnos walked cautiously over to the instruments, and checked the dial. "Three thousand one hundred and ninety-two K." "Alright. And exhaust velocity?" "Five thousand and two metres per second." "Good. Keep checking- make it a habit. And, hey, Sina?" "Hm?" "When's dinner?" "Patience. An hour or so." "A whole hour?" "Ah, stop with the eyes. I can't make it come any faster- I just clean laser lenses. Ask the cook." She left the two of them alone again, and Vake stretched exaggeratedly. He sat down on his chair and watched Irnos for a few moments, as he checked each of the instruments individually. Then, he leaned forwards, and spoke. "You know what's between us and the reactor?" "The floor, the shadow shield, the propellant, and the reactor housing." This was simple stuff. It was all on the blueprint. "Right. And what's in the shadow shield?" "Five centimetres of beryllium for neutron reflection, three centimetres of tungsten steel for gamma stopping and some neutron absorption, and then five centimetres of lithium hydroxide for neutron absorption." "Indeed. About a tonne per square metre it blocks, though we don't really need so much. Distance reduces the radiation significantly- we stand 20m above the reactor. It's the most we can put in as a compromise between making the soldiers up there feel safe and the engineers being able to get the thing off the ground without spending trillions of univs." "I hear the command room is also armoured." "Yeah. The coolant system and some lithium hydroxide. You can sit out a solar storm up there. But this room's armoured enough for most. Remember that you don't want dense armour against protons- you want something with lots of hydrogen in it, to slow the particles. Tell me about defenses for each kind of radiation." "Alpha's easy. Paper, skin, aluminium foil, as long as it doesn't get inside you you're ok. Beta requires foil or a suit. Gamma requires lead, tungsten, or something else dense to physically block it. Charged particles and neutrons require something with light atoms, preferably hydrogen. Carbon makes a good all-round armour, and boron makes even better all-round armour, but it's too expensive for us." Irnos had done an exam on NRTs and safety. This was from memory. "Right. Good. And what does it mean if you can see a blue glow from your reactor?" Irnos swallowed. "You've already absorbed enough radiation to kill you. You have a few minutes to begin shutdown procedures." "And if there was a reactor problem, and it couldn't be shut down from here, what would we do?" "Well... you'd be suited up and sent down to do the manual procedures, or release the expulsion bolt. I would then have to take over engineering. But so many things would have to fail all at once for that to be required-" "You need to know it, anyway. You seem bright, you'll do fine." Vake turned away and began to hum as he arranged a pack of cards along the floor. "Have you ever played Skworl?" Chapter Three After he had finished getting changed into his casuals, Irnos headed up to the galley for the 'evening' meal. The galley was the same room as the crew quarters, but tables folded out and beds folded in. Irnos didn't even get a bed. The ship had five rooms. The uppermost was the astrogation room which doubled as the turret control room, the main sensor suite, and the sleeping quarters for the gunners and astrogators. It was permanently video-linked to the command room. It attached directly to the ship's two telescopes- one visible and one infrared- the radar systems, the solar flare early warning systems, and various other devices. The seats here were mounted on gimbals- spherical frameworks which rotated with the acceleration or gravity. The second room down was the airlock, which also doubled as a cargo hold for what little cargo they were allowed. Spacesuits and weapons were stored here, too. This was where the captain had met them and the access tube had led, and it was also from here that they would jump with parachutes or re-entry balls should that become necessary. The central room, protected by the rooms above and below, the water tanks, and the radiators which radiated out from it (and so their coolant, too) was the command centre. Its defenses made it the room to which they would head in case of a solar storm- water was great for stopping high-energy protons. The captain slept here, and the secondary sensor suite was located by his gimbal-mounted bed/chair. A table, which was also a screen, was fixed down in the centre of the room. Access to mission control, down on the surface, was carried out through here. Below this was the crew quarters/galley. Beds and tables folded from the walls, and there were a number of games. A few exercise machines were fixed to the walls. You were told to strap yourself into bed during sleep, particularly when the ship wasn't accelerating and they were in microgravity. Food was stored in large tanks and was mainly in tins and cans or sachets- it didn't look appetising, but it was food. It was also what they'd eaten in training camp, so they were used to it. The medical stretchers and first aid-boxes were located here, and a quarantine screen could be erected. And then below that was engineering, where Irnos and Vake slept and worked. This was defended from below by the shadow shield and its ceiling was strengthened, too, so that a disastrous event which managed to penetrate the shadow shield would be stopped there. Each room had a toilet, which was behind a curtain, and the crew quarters had two microgravity/low gravity showers in cubicles. There were also hand sanitisers on each level and by the toilets. Waste that could not be recycled was dumped from the ship regularly, and often people gathered to watch the urine crystals at sunset through the optical telescope. It was a marvellous sight. Everything in the mission was going well so far. Vake kept testing him and probing his knowledge, and was seemingly impressed, though Irnos was near his limits. The captain remained distant, not having sent a general message out until the call for dinner. Well, it was dinner for the first-shifters, like Irnos. The third-shifters were having their breakfast now and trying to get themselves into the new twelve-hour day routine. Zeth only needed to sleep for four hours a night, so it wasn't so bad- Irnos covered when Vake was asleep and vice versa but they were both awake together for much of the time. Irnos was first- and third-shift; Vake was first- and second-shift. If there was an emergency, the general alarm would be sounded and everyone awoken. Emergencies included attack, debris getting too close, or (as people kept reminding Irnos) a reactor failure. All things considered, though, the alarm system was more likely to fail than the reactor during flight. As they ate, Terrim turned to him. "But what if the reactor did fail?" "It won't." Irnos took another mouthful. "But if it did?" "In what way? The reactor has been designed so there never is a critical mass of uranium to release a burst of radiation or explode. Someone would have to physically put more uranium in." "And if they did that?" "Well, depends how much. If they took it to a critical mass, it'd release a burst of radiation which the shadow shield would stop. If it exploded, it would take out the rear half of the ship, but all of you would be able to hang on in the upper rooms until you were picked up by a recovery craft from Kranas. I don't see why you're so worried." Terrim smiled. "It's kinda scary thinking that this ship is powered by the same method that weapons use which can wipe out whole cities in an instant." "If you dropped enough water on a city, you could wipe it out in an instant. But you're not scared of water, are you?" He grinned, now. "Well..." Rena leaned over. "He doesn't like the sea. Apparently his older brother almost drowned him when he was six and it's stuck with him." "Oh." Irnos felt a little embarassed. "I chose the wrong example, then. How about sugar?" "Alright. I will admit that I am irrationally scared of nuclear power." Terrim leant back against the chair. "I can't do much about that, then." Irnos finished his food, and then put the tin in the recycling chute. "Anything else?" Rena spoke again. "Irnos, could you make this ship's reactor into a bomb?" "Well..." He thought for a few moments, and then paled slightly. "Yes, I could. With the tools we have here. Though I'd likely get a lethal dose in the process." "How?" "First, lower all of the fuel rods into the reactor. Remove all the control rods and lower the booster rod. Disable all the automatic shutdowns, which would probably be the hardest task. The chamber would have to be empty, and I'd have to do it all at once, or it would release radiation instead. Either way, it wouldn't be powerful enough to wreck more than the reaction chamber." "Could the CPR do that with their rockets too?" "They use solely chemical-based rockets, so no." "So, we have another advantage!" She smiled, which confused Irnos. "I wouldn't call it that." Chapter Four "All crew, alert. The burn cutoff point has almost been reached. The ship will continue at its current speed, and there will be microgravity for a the next seventeen hours. Please do not be alarmed." The captain's voice stopped, and Irnos turned back to the consoles. "Vake? We're flushing ammonia right now." "All good. Right, Vess, talk me through how this works. A layperson would probably ask you how we can rotate the ship without changing course." "Right. As if I was talking to a layperson. A ship keeps going on its vector until a force acts upon it to accelerate it and change that vector. It can change orientation and will keep travelling at the same velocity towards its destination. We've stopped thrusting and won't turn the rockets back on until we face the other way." "Good. And how come we've used more than 50% of our fuel? Won't we need 50% to get us to a stop if it took us 50% to get us to this speed?" "We have far less mass than we did when we began, due to the consumption of fuel. We don't need to decelerate as much mass, so less fuel is required." "Good, good. We've stopped flushing and will go into microgravity-" he flicked a switch to sound the ship microgravity alarm- "now." Everything changed in that moment. Irnos had been walking and now his step pushed him upwards from the ground- and he didn't fall down again. He drew the space-pole from his trouser leg and saw Vake was doing the same. It was a simple device, the space-pole. Just a telescopic aluminium pole with a crowbar-head on one end and a point on the other. It could slide down to 20cm long or extend to 3m, and was used to push off items, or open cases, or even to fight. Some were modified to replace the point with a microthruster, in case you floated away from the ship. Still others had a chamber for 8mm bullets built in, though reloading required complete disassembly. Irnos' was just a conventional one. He used it to push back to the floor. "I haven't used one of these since microgravity training." "You'll never let go of it again. A life-saving device." They heard laughing from through the hatch, and went up to look. Terrim was eating bubbles of water from the air, and an admiring crowd had gathered. It was interesting to watch them float away, as if struggling to escape, and then plucked from the air by his mouth. Microgravity was fun, it had to be said. "The next event of our mission is the rotation, halfway to Kranas. We'll just be using the attitude thrusters. It'll be done too slowly to be noticeable. Until then, how about another game of Skworl?" Chapter Five "Burn begins again in ten seconds. Please retrieve any fluids and seat yourselves before artifical gravity recommences." Vake shut the hatch and they poled over to the floor console to prepare for the burn. They began to inject fuel into the reaction chamber- the reactor, still hot, began to accelerate it. "Here we go." There was a gentle push, as if from above, as gravity was restored. They were now decelerating towards Kranas, and it would be only an hour or so before they got there. Irnos missed microgravity already, despiting the disorienting and vomit-inducing wrongness that his balance systems had relayed to his brain. Most people did indeed throw up first time. Being away from Aiston for too long resulted in muscular and skeletal degeneration. It would be even worse if they were in microgravity the whole time. The people who lived on Kranas for more than ten years required extensive rehabilitation after they returned, which could take up to a year, for them to build back up again. And that was a whole 0.2Gs. Hopefully, though, they wouldn't be away from home for anywhere near that long. Irnos switched the monitor to the visible telescope feed, to watch Kranas slowly grow in the void. Even from here, he could make out the solar farm- 5km3 of solar panels, gathering and then feeding all that electricity to the moonbase and the mining site. Some had proposed that similiar systems be used to gather power to be beamed back to Aiston, as apparently they would run out of nuclear fuel soon. But then again, they'd been running out of uranium for fifty years now, according to those people. The moonbase had been founded twenty years ago, in the rush to "do it before the commies did". Since then, it had grown, and become the permanent home for a hundred or so Zeth and the main stopping point for space travellers heading out into the system. From Kranas, you only needed one large booster and two solid-fuel rockets to get into orbit, where another fuelling station was. The boosters' fuel came from the mining site- water was split into hydrogen and oxygen, which were pressurised to liquid form, and there was some nitrogen lying around for ammonia and solid-fuel production. Where the nitrogen had come from was controversial, but most believed it had escaped from Aiston when the planet was very young and its magnetic field was doing something odd. There was far less nitrogen on the side of Kranas facing away from Aiston. When they reached a few kilometres above the moon, the ship ceased its burn and Irnos felt the pull of gravity upon his body. Weak, now, but stronger than that from the acceleration. Kranas' surface gravity was just over a sixth of Aiston's. The ship's landing thrusters brought it to a halt on a launch/landing pad, like the other ten around it. Four currently had ships upon them, silent grey titans pointing upwards into space, yearning to leave land for the void once more. He recognised the Audacity and the Modesty from their callplates- two Ravas-class destroyers, probably heading out with the merchant ships nearby. While asteroid-mining wasn't as lucrative as had been hoped, it was certainly useful. The iridium, titanium, silver, platinum and rhenium, amongst others, got the merchants a healthy profit. They didn't have to spend time launching and landing, either- their ships were designed to move between orbits, refuelling from space stations (or ice-rich asteroids), and dumping inflatable sacs containing what they had mined into the sea around Xelass. They used tumble-based artificial gravity, hence their odd shapes, and held shuttles to allow their occupants to leave the rocket and spend their earnings. Much of the Unity used asteroid-derived metals- for example, the iridium-steel of the reaction chamber. It couldn't be refined in space, of course, and had to be taken back to Aiston for that. The Republic's asteroid mining programme was well ahead of the CPR's, of course. They'd chosen the outer, denser asteroid belt which provided more heavy elements and ice rather than the inner asteroid belt which was ice-poor and comparatively diffuse, even if it was easier to get to. The wheeled scaffolding outside moved up to the airlock and extended its access tube. This time, there was a reason for the aluminium tube around the bridge. The crew got suited anyway, as risks were not to be taken at any point. They walked out into the lift in file. It was more spacious than the one at the original launch site, and they went slowly down to ground level. A tube like the top half of a cylinder connected the lift exit at the bottom to the bulkhead leading into the Kranas moonbase. A sign stood outside- Kranatown, population 124 and rising. A cheery Zeth greeted them at the airlock as they removed their spacesuits. "Welcome! Welcome to Kranatown! I see you're booked here for the night while your launch site is prepared. Let me show you to your accomodation!" The accomodation, when they reached it, was a number of bulbous rooms carved from the rock. The furniture was nice enough, and they had a room each. Kranatown had a single television channel, which was mainly re-runs of old shows anyway (news items were along the lines of 'Mrs Haejel's baby is now two years old') but they could receive beamed channels from satellites around the moon, which in turn had their data beamed from satellites around Aiston. Light delay was about 1.5 seconds. When Pheron eclipsed Aiston (which happened regularly), the channels all went for a few minutes. Terrim entered Irnos' room. "Hey, Irnos!" "Hi, Terrim." "What are ya doing?" "Checking our orbit." "Orbit?" "Yeah, our transfer orbit, to the asteroid belt." Terrim looked blank. "You don't know about transfer orbits, then." "Nope." "Alright. Okay. Would you like to?" "Make it really simple!" "When we take off and leave Kranas' orbit, we'll be in a circular orbit around Cedris, right?" "Yeah." "Then, we apply thrust, and enter an elliptical orbit that intersects both Aiston's and the belt's orbits. This orbit will take us to the belt without having to thrust, so saving fuel." "Okay." "To enter orbit around Cedris in the belt, we apply thrust to make our orbit circular again. We do the same thing backwards to get back to Kranas." "Alright. Thanks." He smiled wide and infuriatingly, and then left. Chapter Six "Alert. Crew of the Unity, you have twenty minutes to lift-off. Please report back to the ship." Irnos swore and took another swig from the can of Kaevel cider he'd bought. Alcohol wasn't allowed on board, so he'd have to finish it now. But that meant he couldn't savour it like he should. Quickly finishing it, he threw the can in the bin, and hurried to the airlock. The others were gathered there already, putting on their spacesuits, so Irnos joined in. The captain was taking a register, and as he called each name, there was a 'yes, sir'. It made Irnos think a little. He had only talked to half of the people on board the frigate- what did that say about him? The toll of being an engineer? Vake seemed friendly enough with everybody. Very friendly with Sina. The lift door opened, and they entered, to be taken back up to the airlock. "I hope you all took the opportunity to use the toilet and have a proper shower, people." There were a few nods to the captain. "Good, because you won't be seeing another for a week or so. We head out there, patrol a bit, and then head back home." Upon entering the rocket, they headed to their takeoff chairs and strapped themselves in, having put their spacesuits away and their flightsuits on. Irnos braced himself for another blackout, though he knew it probably wouldn't come this time. The acceleration was far less. "T-minus ten seconds." Reactor temperature was in safe range. Reaction chamber was undamaged. The reactor was positioned correctly. Attitude thrusters were fuelled. "T-minus five seconds." Vake sighed on the other side of the room. "You never know how much you'll miss gravity until you spend a week away from it." "T-minus one second." There was a force from below again, forcing the rocket upwards. It didn't hurt so much, but it made his face sag a little, and held his arms against the seat. "And we have lift-off." The rocket headed upwards into space. Irnos found himself wondering exactly how many people had felt this feeling- one thousand? Two thousand? It put him in a special group, either way. Going into space really gave you a whole new view on reality. He looked at the monitor, and at the shrinking surface features of Kranas, with a sense of trepidation. There was a clunk as the solid-fuel rockets detached, and then another shortly after as the liquid-fuel rockets went. Kranas would be a great place for nuclear take-off rockets, Irnos thought. Perhaps they should set up a test-site here. They were in orbit around the moon. They would attach to a refuelling station soon, which would fill up their ammonia sacs in preparation for the beltward burn. After leaving Kranas' orbit, they would enter the transfer orbit, and then hopefully be back home in a week and four days. Spaceflight was proving interesting, but Irnos had decided he preferred solid ground and proper gravity. The sacs filled up with thousands of tonnes of ammonia around the rocket, attached by tubes to the station. The tubes then sealed and detached, and the rocket was loose once more. Irnos and Vake got out of their chairs and then their flightsuits, and checked the instrumentation for any sign of something being wrong, just out of habit. Vake flicked the comm. "Reactor is increasing in temperature at a safe rate. We can begin the burn in just over one minute, sir." The captain's voice came through. "Good to hear it. Let's get started." It then bleeped to mark the channel cutting. After a few more seconds, the ammonia pumps came online, and they started to push propellant into the reaction chamber. Slowly, very slowly, the ship began to accelerate into a circular orbit around Cedris. Chapter Seven Irnos sat in the crew quarters, watching the telescope monitor. The stars were out there, static, bright pinpricks. He wondered how long it would be before the Zeth reached another star system- or, just maybe, encountered another civilisation. But there were other things to do first. More advanced nuclear engines were needed. Some said that a kind of fusion drive would be needed, but Irnos knew that the nuclear industry would fight to the death to prevent fusion from being developed. No such technology could arise until all the planet's uranium and thorium was exhausted. And such a grand shift would spell the end for all the current, fission-based governments. Before they could get to another star system, the Republic would probably want to send plants to Retaan to make it habitable, and then animals, and then colonists. Perhaps some of the Gennsian and Fallakian moons would be colonised, and maybe they would find life in Evensa's sub-ice ocean. It was too early to tell. Gas giants would be a great source of hydrogen and helium-3 for fusion engines, if that ever became possible. The 'Ophidian Cube', that mysterious artifact on Ophid, would have to be recovered. Conspiracy theorists said it was a device to monitor the development of the Zeth, and that when they reached a certain point, aliens within the government would take over and call their fleets from the stars to conquer and subdue the system. It was all ridiculous, but so were all conspiracy theories. One of the recruits, Halla, came over. "Hey, Irnos. Nice to see you up here for once!" Irnos sighed. "Vake and Sina are... together, downstairs. I didn't want to invade their privacy." She giggled. "Terrim and Rena are at it all the time up here, and they don't mind us being in the same room, as long as we don't stare. In space, nobody really cares." "I guess so. But I'd rather not be down there feeling awkward." "Hm. How long till microgravity?" "Oh, about an hour." "Ok, thanks." She smiled at him and went off again. Irnos tried to remember what she did- assistant astrogator? Yeah, probably. Sina came up from the hatch to engineering. She went over and tapped Turen on the shoulder, who had been dozing. "Uh- hello, Sina." "You should be up in the top deck." "Oh. Sorry." He got up groggily and headed over to the hatch to upstairs. Sina sat down in the chair he had been in, and shook her head. "I can't believe how much sleep he thinks he needs." Irnos shrugged. "Does he do the work?" "Oh, yes, when he's awake he's very good. When he's awake." "I would have thought looking after lasers was exciting enough to keep you awake." "Well. You check the lenses for debris every hour or so, make sure the feeds are working, and try a battery-powered beam every now and then. You also make sure the radiators and coolant pumps are working. Irnos, do you know about the coolant?" "Yeah. The lasers have 40% efficiency, which is pretty much as good as this kind can get. A second at full power produces one hundred and fifty megajoules of heat, as we have a nought point five duty cycle and a 200 megawatt laser. This could do severe damage to the ship." "Right." She nodded. "So how do we deal with it?" "A water cooling system, five tonnes kept just above freezing point, and pumped through the lasers. The cooling system can safely deal with about ten one-second pulses, as we don't want to bring the coolant to boiling point, but rather about ten degrees below." "Good. Perhaps I should get you to help up there instead of him." "Ulia's a big enough job for me, but thanks." She smiled. "No problem." Irnos watched as she headed up through the hatch to upstairs. He then sighed and went back into engineering. Chapter Eight "We've started thrusting into the transfer orbit, sir." "Good. Keep me updated." The comm bleeped as the conversation was ended. Vake watched the dials, screens, and timers for a few seconds, and then scratched his head. "Irnos?" "Yeah?" "Keep watching the instruments. I'm heading upstairs." "Alright." The engineer headed up the ladder and into the crew quarters, leaving Irnos in engineering alone. He checked each instrument for the hundredth time that hour and then sat down as heavily as he could given the gravity onto a chair. He wondered how the engineer of the Retaan mission had managed to stay sane during all those months, and considered that perhaps he'd been a stronger-willed Zeth than himself. The Retaan mission had used a rotating ring to provide centipetal gravity for those on board, and had also contained an internal algae 'forest'. They had lived off the algae and it had provided them with oxygen. The algae tanks also provided shielding against solar flares. However, that vessel had been assembled in orbit. A spaceship like that couldn't be assembled and launched from the ground. And it had cost twice as much as a battleship. The vessel itself had landed in the sea upon return and was now a museum piece- people could go inside and see where the explorers had lived. The shuttle they'd used to reach the surface was there, too. They had landed on the ice cap and used robots to produce hydrogen and oxygen to refuel their shuttle so it could escape the 1.44G gravity. He'd been inside both, in the museum. He had thought it uncomfortably small back then, but now that he looked back it seemed very spacious. The Unity was far more cramped. Irnos had considered what it would be like to be the first Zeth on a certain planet. The more planets they landed on, the less fame came with it. There wouldn't be many more landings left before the accolade became nearly meaningless, which was quite depressing. The CPR was too far behind to be the one sending those landings- it would be Xelass. It might be Irnos, but the again there were thousands of possible candidates and he didn't stand out that much. It made him smile to think of the number of bad decisions and sheer terrible luck the CPR's space programme had experienced, even though it had more Zethpower and more to make up for. The reactor temperature was a number on the screen. It remained constant and he tried to think about how high a temperature 3200K really was. Only carbon, tantalum, tungsten, rhenium and osmium would still be solid when they got to this temperature. Everything else would be a liquid or a gas. Cedris' surface temperature was even higher- 6250K, or thereabouts. Nothing the Xelassians could make could touch the sun. Vake returned with a tin of food and tossed another to Irnos would very good aim considering that they hadn't been in this level of gravity for long. "Dinner for ya." "Thanks." They sat down and ate, using plastic spoons with serrated edges. These were the same cutlery they had used in training- designed for the Zeth three-mandible jaw. The ship PA sounded. "Attention, this is the captain speaking. Microgravity in one minute." "Ah. Watch the propellant- start flushing, Irnos." He did so. They were in the transfer orbit now, and would soon be heading out towards the belt. The ship drifted onwards. Vake pressed the microgravity alarm switch, and it sounded. And then the ship was gravityless again. Irnos had already taken his space-pole to hand and pushed over to the ceiling. He checked the instruments there and turned back to Vake. "Reactor is cooling to warm. We'll be in power generation range in one minute." "Good. The reaction chamber is completely empty?" "Empty as space." "Then we're where we need to be. I'm going to do some zero-gee things to remind myself how it works." The general alarm sounded now. "Attention all crew. We have detected a ship." Vake and Irnos looked at each other, wide-eyed, and then turned on the connection to the command room. Chapter Nine "Putting up the thermal, occlusive, and IFF signatures on your monitor now, sir." The captain squinted at his screen, and then drew back. "It's CPR. A frigate! They shouldn't be out here..." Halla's voice came down. "Iric is trying to contact traffic control and find out what's going on, sir." "If they're hostile, it's too late. CPR frigates carry four HE missiles, fired two at a time for balance reasons, a flak cannon, and this one looks like it has plenty of delta-vee left over." "Have they sent anything, sir?" "It's coming through now- let me sent it onto the speakers-" There was silence as the captain tapped the keys, breathing loudly into the microphone, and then he spoke again. "Here." Now, through the speakers, came another voice. Harsh, deep, in broken Aisish, it was an accent they all recognised. "You are not permitted to interfere with our mission. You will be destroyed." The speakers went quiet and then the crew swung into action. "Unshuttering lasers! Ready to fire!" "Attitude thrusters ready for evasive burn, sir." "Computer network systems withdrawn, sir." "Twenty thousand kilometres away and closing, sir." The captain broadcasted again. "They're firing missiles! One-second pulses, gunner!" There was no noise as the two lasers fired. At such short range, they were unstoppable. The CPR frigate wouldn't survive, Irnos knew. "Scragged their vessel and the missile which looked to be on target, sir." Sina sounded relieved. There were whoops and cheers around the ship. "Their other looks set to miss us, around eight metres from the ship." The captain looked round the mission control room. "Someone go downstairs and get the engineers to ready us for a burn, in case any more ships appear. I'm contacting ground control. They'll have heard our shift to assault mode and be wondering what's going on." "I'll go down, sir." "Ok." Rena went to the hatch and headed down to engineering, a smile on her face. "We got 'em- the mission is-" The missile streaked onwards, just too far to port to hit. It was a 200kg cylinder, viciously barbed at the front end, its rockets powering it onwards with a jet of red flame. Inside its cap sat thirty kilograms of high explosive and shrapnel, and at the front of the barb was something else- a proximity fuse. The missile exploded five metres from the mission control room. Spikes and balls of metal smashed into the spaceship, slicing through all those inches of titanium without a complaint. The vapourised remains of the missile and its remaining fuel exploded in a spherical blast of gas that hit the ship and tore the top four floors away, pulverising them completely. Metal, wiring, and bits of Zeth were sent flying into the void, defeated by a single tiny radar device in the nosecone of the enemy missile. The remainder of the ship had been sent spinning. In the last remaining room of the vessel, three Zeth held on to the wall handholds for their lives. Irnos felt a gentle breeze on his face. He remembered something from training. He concentrated, and heard the voice of a lecturer in his head. 'Veteran spacemen coming back to Aiston are terrified by a sudden wind. Their instincts tell them it is a hull breach.' "Shit!" He shouted, and released the handholds, the rapidly shifting centripetal effects on his body making his stomach churn. He air-swam frantically over to the emergency panel and forced it open- inside were hull patches of various sizes, an emergency spacesuit, and a toolbox. He grabbed one of the patches, launched himself with his space-pole towards the little hole in the hull, and sealed it. Vake was at another console- the one for the attitude thrusters. The force on them softened and then they were in pleasant microgravity again. Irnos almost threw up but held it in. He swore loudly and looked at the other two. "We're screwed." Vake sighed. "Not necessarily. We have the reactor, and we can thrust ourselves back into Aiston's orbit. Once we get close enough, we can take the re-entry balls and go down to the surface." "The reaction chamber is undamaged?" "Well. Our more pressing concerns are food, water, and oxygen. Irnos- scan the reaction chamber for damage. Rena- take the emergency comms dish and see if you can contact ground control." Irnos headed over to the console, and Rena to the emergency cupboard. There was a fold-up dish, about thirty centimetres across, that could be attached to the room's monitors. She plugged it in and tried to find a signal. "Vake." The engineer turned to face Irnos. "Is it..." Irnos nodded solemnly. "There's a hole." Vake swore loudly and hit the console with his fist. "Alright. I'm going to suit up and go upstairs, to see if the food and water crates survived. I'll attach the emergency inflatable airlock to the access hatch. Irnos, see if you can do anything about the hole. Rena, keep trying to reach control." Pulling the emergency suit from the cupboard, Vake begin to angrily force himself in. He had dropped his glasses and was having trouble seeing. Once done, he took a small, deflated cylinder and attached it to some pre-placed holds around the access hatch, then pressed a button. The cylinder filled with air. He opened it up and entered the cylinder. Then he closed the opening behind him, and opened the access hatch, using his hands to haul himself out onto the deck above. He stood in the vacuum, using his space-pole's crowbar end to hold to the holds on this side of the hatch. He touched his hand to his neck for the radio. "Irnos, I can see a food crate, and a water crate. Much of the wall on that side survived. There's also an active computer." "Okay. Can you bring them down?" "Yes. Any joy with the hole?" Irnos shook his head despite the fact that Vake couldn't see him do it. "None." "Alright." The engineer moved the computer and the crates into the airlock, repeating the open-close open-close routine. They now had food and water in engineering. He stayed in his suit, and headed over to the emergency locker again. He took out an iridium-steel square and a welder. "Shit. Vake, you won't be able to." "I have to try." The suited Zeth headed back out through the airlock, and began to head down the ship towards the engine. Chapter Ten Irnos could not watch the engineer at work- only listen. Vake was welding the plate into the chamber in the vacuum, and a line of white hot metal, as brilliant as an incandescent bulb, appeared as he moved the welder over the square. "Done, Irnos. Now, if you sent a little drizzle of ammonia in-" Irnos did so. The drops of liquid sank down past Vake, off into space. Wait. What was going on with that droplet? The engineer looked closer. It was glowing slightly blue. Panicking, Vake turned to look at the reactor, and then released a long and terrified string of profanities. "What is it?" Irnos shouted into the microphone. "The shrapnel went further than the chamber. It penetrated the reactor housing. I've already seen the light." Irnos went loose. He closed his eyes for a few seconds and then opened them again. "I'm sorry." "No. It's okay. You could have done without me being baggage, using up your food and water, anyway." "No, we need you to get us home! I don't know how to-" "You can do it." Vake spoke firmly. "Now let me save your lives." The engineer pushed over to the reactor. Nausea was beginning to get to him. He knew that if he threw up in his suit, he'd drown in it. So he held himself together and began to work at the expulsion bolt- the device that would launch the reactor off into space in an emergency. He clicked the combination in, breathing hard, and then watched the little explosion. The spherical reactor shot off, down through the thruster and away into interplanetary space, still leaking radiation. It carried Vake with it- holding on to one of its support wires, broken in the release. He sighed within the suit. "It was nice knowing you two." "You too, Vake." Irnos' voice was broken and dry. "We'll miss you, Vake." Rena spoke quietly. Still holding on to the reactor, Vake smiled. "I'm going to open the suit. I'd rather die from vacuum than from radiation poisoning." No-one on the other side of the radio said a word. "They say it takes you ten seconds to go unconscious and about sixty seconds to asphyxiate. You should always exhale before going into a vacuum or risk severe lung damage. I guess you can consider this a test of that." There was a click through the radio, and then nothing more. Rena laid her head on Irnos' shoulder and began to cry. Chapter Eleven "Ground control, this is the Unity. Over." The emergency dish had been put in the airlock and the access hatch opened, though the airlock hatch remained shut. "Ground control, this is the Unity. Over." A crackling, faint voice came in reponse. "We hear you, Unity. This is ground control, over." A smile spread across Irnos' mandibles. "Good to hear from you, control. We've lost ten crew, including the captain, to a CPR frigate, now destroyed. Over." There were a few seconds of light delay. The voice on the other end sounded neutral, despite the news. "How were the crew lost, over?" "Proximity-fused missile, control. We thought it was going to miss, over." A few seconds, again. "Proximity-fused." Control sounded contemplative, and a little bitter. "We have you on radar, Unity, but your IFF is gone, over." "Lost with the top four floors, over." It was quiet for a moment. "What's your delta vee, over?" "Zero, control. The reactor had to be expelled, over." "Oh." A few seconds of quiet. "We can't pick you up, Unity. All our ships are currently in combat, over." "Combat, control? Over." Light delay, and then control's voice sounded a little joyful. "The war with the CPR has begun, over." Rena and Irnos looked at each other, and Irnos swore. "Could you repeat that, control? Over." "We are at war with the CPR, Unity. Their unprovoked attack on your vessel has ignited the conflict we've been waiting for. They've already annexed the Kassic Empire and begun launching ICBMs, over." "Which cities are lost, over?" A few seconds. "None, Unity. We intercepted and destroyed all their warheads. We then began orbital bombardment, and destroyed all their satellites. The XSF has just finished destroying their moonbase, over." "By the..." Irnos swore again. "Thanks for the info, control. Any advice for us, over?" "Afraid not, Unity. What's your course, over?" "Elliptical orbit through the belt and then back to Aiston, over." "You will have to wait it out, Unity. Over and out." The voice didn't reply any further. Chapter Twelve "Hey, Irnos?" He pushed himself over by space-pole to see what Rena was doing. She was on the computer, and looking through the files. "Yeah?" "This is weird." "What?" She pressed for a file to open. It was a sound file, and began playing. They listened together. A voice came from the speaker, harsh, in broken Aisish: "You are not permitted to interfere with our mission. You will be destroyed." "The words the CPR frigate sent." "Yes, but, it was last edited before the ship launched from Aiston. This file was prerecorded before the flight began." She looked at him wonderingly. "Well- check the sensor records from the contact. Those will reveal if they sent anything." "I'm doing it now." He waited for a few seconds, and then she spoke again. "They sent the peaceful hail, and then repeated it again once our lasers were unshuttered. They didn't want to fight, and only fired their missiles once we began powering our lasers." Irnos clenched his fists. "This was fucking set up." "And another thing- didn't you wonder why they sent a captain for this mission? Why not a commander?" "Shit. They wanted someone they could trust to carry this out. So why was the CPR ship here at all?" "Hard to say. Looks exploratory. Espionage?" Irnos shook his head. "There's nothing to see out here. My guess is it was asked to come out here for a rendezvous." "Why?" "Diplomatic. The CPR wanted to look peaceful- a handshake in space." "Couldn't they have done that on a station?" "Neither the Republic or the CPR would trust the other on their stations. It would have to be out here." Rena curled up. "The Republic wanted war with the CPR, but why?" The radio crackled again, and the voice of the control officer came through. "To protect the Republic." "You were listening!" Irnos pushed himself over, fury written on his face. "You fuckers!" Light delay. "As long as the CPR exists, every citizen of Xelass is unsafe. We would not be doing our duty to our country if we let them live. The CPR must be destroyed to preserve the Republic and ensure the safety of its citizens." "Billions of people!" The voice did not waver. "The Republic comes first." Rena spoke, almost trembling with anger. "You tricked them into this. They didn't want a fucking war. There could have been a peaceful solution!" Control sighed. "Everyone in the Republic is taught to hate the CPR. Everyone in the CPR is taught to hate us, except a hundred times more. There was no reasoning with them." "That's what you want to believe, isn't it? That they're just machines, programmed to hate us. You want to forget that they're just Zeth- people, just like us. What you're doing is fucking genocide. And genocide can't be justified." A few seconds. "I see you, too, cannot be reasoned with. Goodbye, Unity. You won't survive to return to Aiston, so your newfound knowledge will prove extremely useful, I'm sure." The channel cut. Rena buried her face in her hands. Irnos clenched his fists and punched a console, which hurt. Epilogue Anyone interested in space travel understands that the distances involved are massive. They can attach numbers to them, or terms; a light-year, an astronomical unit, a parsec... but to name something is not to understand it. Only once you have crossed them can you really understand how far one hundred million kilometres is. Yet the Unity would have to travel twice that to reach home again. And it had no way to thrust itself back into a circular orbit when it reached Aiston's- it would continue to orbit Cedris elliptically until it fell apart, with two star-blanched Zeth skeletons on board. There was enough food for five days, and enough water for three. The oxygen could last them for about as long as the water. Without the algal tanks, it would not be replenished. Irnos knew they would never see Aiston or Kranas again, and each time he thought back to the past there was a painful twinge of sadness. He would never see a plant, or an animal, or a house, or a blue sky ever again. Only the stars watched the remnants of the Unity slowly die. He turned to Rena, and smiled. "You know... I always thought you were beautiful." She now turned to look at him, eyes wet with tears, and then she replied. "I always thought you were a nice guy." "Thanks." He held her, looking up at the ceiling, and exhaled deeply. "Do you want to..." She nodded, tearfully. And there, at the very end, on board half a nuclear rocket passing through the outer asteroid belt, they were together. If they had still had sensors, they would have detected something very bright a few million kilometres away, heading straight towards them. But the telescopes were gone, and they were lying asleep upon the deck. They did not wake as it reached them, or as an access tube attached itself to the hatch, and a mechanical arm plucked them both out in turn from the Unity. Category:Articles by User:Holbenilord